Hinged containers or boxes are frequently used to contain small products, such as compact recording discs, coin collections, and the like. The typical container is formed of two open top molded plastic trays or sections and each section has integrally molded hinge elements which are snap fitted with hinge elements on the other section to form the hinged container.
It is desirable to have a programmed assembly system in which the container sections are automatically joined together, folded to a closed condition, stacked in side-by-side relation and then loaded into a container. An automated system of this type will greatly reduce the manual labor normally involved in handling, stacking and loading a multiplicity of containers.